The provision of decorative designs on exposed surfaces has been known since the earliest cavemen first scratched or painted animal sketches on the walls of their dwellings. As is well-known, a variety of techniques are available for decorating surfaces, including printing, painting, carving, stenciling, etc. The present invention, however, is directed to the transferring of patterns onto a surface in a new and useful manner that may be particularly implemented by children. Even specifically, the present invention concerns decorating items of produced, such as pumpkins, in order to provide a decorative holiday theme. Of particular concern is providing a method and a kit for decorating pumpkins for halloween.
As is known, pumpkin carving has long been one of the several ways in which halloween is celebrated. Traditionally, pumpkin carving involves the removal of a portion of the pumpkin shell surrounding the stem, removal of the seeds and fibers contained in the pumpkin and thereafter carving humorous, grotesque or other decorative features partially or whollythrough the pumpkin shell by removing fleshy portions of the shell to obtain the desired appearance. Internal illumination is then provided either by a candle or a battery operated light to result in a glowing decorative pattern.
In the past, pumpkin carving was typically accomplished with the use of pocketknives, paring knives, and the like. Due to the size of these cutting instruments, a typical carver was only able to obtain limited, fairly large-scaled decorative features. These knives can be quite difficult to control, and this, in conjunction with the sharpness of the knife, exposes the carver to the danger of injury. The result is that pumpkin carving exhibits a fairly high degree of danger for young children so that pumpkin carving was often done by an adult parent or older sibling. This, of course, reduces the enjoyment to the younger child from the pumpkin carving festivity.
In order to meet the need for safer instruments that might be utilized to carve decorative appearances in pumpkin shells, a pumpkin carving kit was developed and was described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,828,114 issued May 9, 1989 to John P. Bardeen. This pumpkin carving kit allows more intricate designs to be carved in the pumpkin shell and increases the safety over normal, pre-existing carving techniques for children, adults and the like. While this pumpkin carving kit exhibited a superior solution in response to the desire to carve pumpkins, there remained a need for safe pumpkin decorating techniques available to even younger children or as an alternative to pumpkin carving.
Other techniques have been known in the past to decorate pumpkins, and a primary example is the placing of decorative stickers on the pumpkin shell. Here, for example, decorative elements such as eyes, ears, noses, mouths and teeth are configured out of brightly colored paper-like material that is provided with an adhesive backing. The user simply selects the desired features and sticks each feature at a desired location on the pumpkin shell. While this both provides enjoyment for a small child and is safe, it fairly limits the festive event since very little time is involved in applying the stickers to the pumpkin shell.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved surface decorating techniques that may be specially employed by children. These techniques need to be safe and easy to implement while providing increased enjoyment for the decorating experience. Moreover, there remains a need for an improved method and kit, especially usable by children, that may be employed in the decorating of pumpkins for halloween.